Community Animation

The Basic Issue

Communities are not always "functional". I once asked a man who was responsible for supply of parts for army tanks, "What is the smallest part that can keep a tank from going?" He replied, "a small gasket". Sometimes it does not take much to keep a community from functioning. Everything else may well be operating very well, but, as with the tank, it is not going anywhere until that piece is provided.

Community Animation is a term I have adopted to describe the approach to Community Development which I do. For me, it consists of coming along side a group, an organization, or a community and providing the piece which is missing until such a time as the community becomes functional once more and both provides its own missing piece, and starts producing what only it can produce.

This approach to community intervention is often conducted while doing another activity. Actually , it could be done from any operational platform. The critical aspect is the provision of the missing piece, either directly or indirectly. Sometimes it involves locating the ordinary provider of such a "critical ingredient to community life" and "jump-starting" it or repairing it so it can produce the essential aspect for overall community life.

Actually, every component of a community, institutionally speaking is a sort of "community animating system". Each puts in some required component into a community helping it thereby to function well. Businesses, schools, churches, non-profit organizations, are typical of the sorts of animating systems found in a Community. Sometimes these animating systems break down. It is the jumpstarting of community animating systems, which I call "community animation".

Berle points out in his book Power, that power is personal and is exercised through institutions ( ).The "empowerment of people", or, growing them up into institutions in the community, is my preferred approach to community animation. When blocks to that task emerge, they become a concern of mine, in that I work to find a tool that will make the job of removing them easier. I then try to perfect those tools and share them with other practitioners. I have developed a number of tangible and intangible tools for professionals who work with people over the years, one of which I refer to in the phrase, "Get the Heart Working First".

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